We’ve both been happy with the prenatal and postnatal health care services provided, and have been equally pleased with the day care center he’s been going to four days a week for the past four months.

But there’s one snag: even though I’m his father, I often feel invisible to the health and child care professionals who help care for our son. No matter how involved I am in his life, my wife is essentially treated as the priority parent.

Doctors, nurses and baby sitters don’t always pay attention to me, and sometimes dodge my questions entirely. Some of them have cut me off midsentence, and they often speak directly to my wife, even though I’m standing right there.

Part of me feels like a jerk for complaining about it. After all, my wife carried our child for 41 weeks, went through 43 hours of labor and had an emergency C-section. She’s is a wonderful, funny, devoted mom who spent six months on maternity leave with a colicky child who screamed. A lot. She found the necessary resources that helped us get our son into a sleeping and eating routine that has since transformed the three of us into a happy, relaxed, functioning family unit.

But being treated as a second-string parent is a struggle for me. My wife and I split baby duties 50/50, and I spend every Tuesday with him. I’m his primary caregiver when my wife takes work trips that have lasted up to 10 days. I feel like we’re on equal footing as parents. Despite ongoing stereotypes of dads as bumbling idiots who can’t change diapers, there has been a significant increase in the number of stay-at-home fathers in recent years. I’m constantly running into other fathers when I pick our son up at day care. So why are my wife and I not treated as equals?

It started during the pregnancy. During my wife’s scans and checkups, I would say things like, “Is this normal?” or “What does that mean, exactly?” or “I’ve noticed that …” But these questions and comments were often brushed aside.

A few days after our son was born, a midwife came by our flat for a routine visit and said he was malnourished and needed to go back to the hospital right away. She spoke directly to my wife, ignoring me entirely.

At day care, when our son falls on his head (it happens a lot; he’s desperate to walk) or develops a fever (also happens a lot; nurseries are germ factories), the staff members call my wife first. They see me more often than they see my wife, yet questions about sunscreen and diaper rash cream inevitably go to her first. Once, when they called me in the middle of a class I was teaching, I answered the call and they said, “We’ve tried calling your wife but can’t get through.” Seriously?

We give baby sitters both of our cell numbers before we leave, but it is my wife who gets texts like “He is fine, enjoy yourself!” or “He won’t stop crying, what should I do?” I’ve gotten texts from baby sitters only twice: once when my wife was out of town, and once when her phone was dead.

In the end I know it doesn’t really matter whom they call or text first. We’re both going to deal with the issues as they come. But to be so heavily involved in his life and yet feel so invisible at the same time is hard to get used to.

This story is at the NEW YORK TIMES.

The festival, which will include screenings of 14 selected films, discussions, Q&As, and musical performances, will take place at London’s 02 (Peninsula Square, SE10 0DX; Jubilee line to North Greenwich) from Thursday through Sunday.

Explaining the rationale behind jumping the pond, the Sundance chairman, Robert Redford, announced his hope of helping to “build a picture of our country that is broadly reflective of the diversity of voices not always seen in our cultural exports.”

With that goal in mind, one of Sundance London’s big events will be a screening on Saturday of the 1986 Tim Hunter film “River’s Edge,” starring Keanu Reeves, Crispin Glover and Dennis Hopper, that recounts the story of how local teenagers deal with the murder of one of their friends. Mr. Glover, whose long career includes his role as George McFly in “Back to the Future,” will do a Q&A after the film.

Music will play a big role in the London festival, both on film and in live performances.

“Under African Skies,” a new documentary, commemorates the 25th anniversary of Paul Simon’s “Graceland” album, which was recorded in South Africa as the United Nations held a cultural boycott in response to apartheid there.

The trip-hop pioneer Tricky will team up with the singer Martina Topley-Bird on Friday to perform his debut 1995 album “Maxinquaye,” which Rolling Stone has called an “essential” 90s recording. After a screening on Sunday of a Lian Lunson documentary about the singer-songwriter Kate McGarrigle, who died at 63 in January 2010, her children, Martha and Rufus Wainwright, will perform Ms. McGarrigle’s songs live.

“Shut Up and Play the Hits,” a documentary about New York’s LCD Soundsystem, follows the band’s final 48 hours of performances before calling it quits. The film “Coming Up for Air” follows the London band Placebo, which has been together nearly two decades, on its eighth world tour. Placebo will perform live on Saturday. Finally, the Chicago rapper Common has a lead role in “Luv,” a coming-of-age film that screens Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

“Sundance London is also an opportunity for us to expand and to show the world, beginning with London, this very special part of American culture, which is American independent film,” said John Cooper, the festival director.

This story is at the NEW YORK TIMES.

Image: Paul Simon with members of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, by Luise Gubb, from paulsimon.com

British premieres, exclusive double-bills and conversations with contemporary Palestinian directors will be held through May 3 at three London venues: the Barbican Cinema, the Khalili Lecture Theater at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and Darwin Theater on the campus of University College London.

This year’s festival features more than 50 works from 16 countries, including new Palestinian comedy, drama and shorts from artists such as Ursula Biemann, Mike Hoolboom, and Travis Wilkerson. On Wednesday is a screening of Susan Sontag’s only documentary, “Promised Lands,” and next week brings a screening of a French-Maoist Palestine manifesto called “L’Olivier.”

On Thursday, the New York University Cultural Studies professor Ella Shohat will give a talk, illustrated with film excerpts, on the political history of Israeli cinema. Themed events will cover topics such as the Druze minority in Israel, and the Iraq War. An exhibition called “Navigations: Palestinian Video Art, 1988 to 2011″ (through Thursday) will survey work by video artists practicing in Palestine and abroad.

Begun in 1998 at SOAS, the film festival has operated under the umbrella of the nonprofit Palestine Film Foundation since 2004. Woven into many of the festival’s films may be what Nicholas Blincoe of The Guardian once called a mix of wry wit and self-doubt.

The full story is at the NEW YORK TIMES.

Image: a still from “Palestine in the South,” courtesy of the Palestine Film Foundation

Audio sources:

Shlomo Live on Jools Holland, from Canal de Joales11
Live footage of QBert and Reeps One @ Jazz Cafe by Droppin’ Science
DJ Shadow from the film “Scratch,” from Cargoplex

Reverb 2012 will host a series of contemporary classical performances from Friday through March 4 at Roundhouse (Chalk Farm Road; NW1 8EH; 44-844-482-8008; Chalk Farm tube stop), a performing arts center in London originally used as a steam engine repair shed.

According to Gabriel Prokofiev, a composer and D.J. performing at the festival, “Classical music’s kind of gotten stuck in this very old-fashioned format that doesn’t really fit into most young people’s lives.”

The 90-piece Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, conducted by Sir Mark Elder, will perform its rendition of Berlioz’s “Romeo and Juliet” on opening night, and the Roundhouse Music Collective will perform live sets that combine alternative classical, jazz and electronica.

On Saturday, the Aurora Orchestra and its conductor Nicholas Collon will present “Love Song for the City,” incorporating elements from Strauss’s “Metamorphosen,” and a new chamber arrangement of Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story.”

The singer-songwriter Imogen Heap on Sunday will perform her a cappella soundtrack for the 1928 French Surrealist silent film “The Seashell and the Clergyman,” accompanied by the Holst Singers, a British choir.

And on March 3, the London Contemporary Orchestra will perform Xenakis’s “Metastasis” and Stockhausen’s “Studie I,” set alongside “Doghouse” by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead, a 20-minute portion of Mr. Greenwood’s score to the 2010 film “Norwegian Wood.” The evening will also feature the European premiere of Prokofiev’s “Concerto for Bass Drum and Orchestra,” with the soloist Joby Burgess. Richard Lannoy and Prokofiev will perform D.J. sets, and soloists from the LCO and Roundhouse Music Collective will also perform.

The festival closes March 4 with choirs incorporating folk, world, beat-boxing and classical into their performances. The event culminates in a mass performance of Orlando Gough’s “Making Music Overture.”

“If people start talking in the back, no one’s going to turn around and go ‘shhhh,’ or anything. We’re not going to have any of that,” the D.J. Richard Lannoy said about the event.

This story first appeared at the NEW YORK TIMES.

Photo by Samantha West. Courtesy of the Roundhouse

She was born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles in 1938, but her early managers figured Jamesetta would have more allure as Etta James. Though she was anointed the “Matriarch of the Blues”, her honest, expressive vocal style lent itself to various genres, such as rhythm & blues, pop and jazz, and earned her multiple Grammy awards. She opened for the Rolling Stones on several occasions, and was inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame.

But Ms James didn’t much care for labels. In “Rage to Survive: the Etta James Story”, an autobiography written with David Ritz, she explained that she resented being classified as a blues singer:

Sure, I can sing the blues all night long. I love the blues. I honor the form. But another part of me knows I can sing country and western just as soulfully. Not to mention hard rock. I hate restrictions. The survivor part of me, though, said take the money. And I did.

Plenty of ink has already been spilt over Ms James’s various ups and downs, professionally and personally, her battles with drug addiction, her fearlessness and unfettered persona. In a 1978 interview with NME she even aligned herself with that era’s punks and rock musicians:

“I was originally like a punker, know what I mean, like the punks are today, I’d spit in a minute. And I notice Mick [Jagger] does that same facial expression that I see, so then I sit in the dressing room and I think it’s really weird how these guys have gotten over.”

That fiery spirit reared its head in early 2009, when Ms James derided Beyoncé for her rendition of “At Last” at Barack Obama’s inauguration ball (despite applauding her version of the song on the “Dream Girls” film soundtrack). “I tell you that woman he had singing for him, singing my song—she’s going to get her ass whupped.”

For a 70-year-old woman to still have some heckling in her indicates a rather clear rage to survive, one that accompanied her until her last days at the Riverside Community Hospital in California, where she died on January 20th, aged 73. (In tribute, Beyoncé referred to Ms James on her own official website as “one of the greatest vocalists of our time. I am so fortunate to have met such a queen.”) The Reverend Al Sharpton is expected to preside over Ms James’s funeral this weekend. Others still will dance to her music, nice and slow if they are lucky.

This story originally appeared at THE ECONOMIST.

photo by blogowitz. Photo is of Etta James Rocks the House, a 1964 live album

The five classically trained but comic members of the Spaghetti Western Orchestra take things a step farther. They’re a tribute act that devote their humor-filled shows entirely to classic Sergio Leone films such as “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” “For a Few Dollars More,” and “Once Upon a Time in the West,” and perform them with 100-odd instruments, including trumpet, bassoon and random items such as bottles, toys, bicycle pumps and Tasmanian lottery balls. As part of a larger tour of Britain this winter, this Australian group will perform from Jan. 5 to 11 in Queen Elizabeth Hall at London’s Southbank Centre.

Wearing bowler hats, suspenders, bow ties, vests, spats and white makeup, each member of the orchestra portrays film characters such as “the Lieteller” or “the Youngfeller” and perform scores typically written for much larger groups. They add comical sound effects to Morricone’s compositions by blowing on bottles and crushing cornflakes, and playing coat hangers and nail clippers.

The group is often highly praised as an “ingenious gang of comic maestros,” but have also been criticized as a technically limited act better suited for YouTube than concert halls.

Expect plenty of ricocheting bullet sound effects, whistling and a spoken narrative to keep the stories moving.

The full story is at the NEW YORK TIMES

Photo courtesy of Southbank Centre, Spaghetti Western Orchestra

“A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I-XVIII 2011,” which contains more than 800 portraits, as well as extensive annotations and footnotes, is on display through Jan. 2 at the Tate Modern in London.

“You have these 18 stories and between all of them, something is said that is maybe not so easy to articulate about the complexities of life, birth and death,” Ms. Simon said. “What does it all amount to, are we evolving, or just repeating? It is about fate. Whether fate is determined by chance, blood or circumstance.”

The exhibition includes empty portraits to represent living members of a bloodline who could not be photographed due to imprisonment, military service, dengue fever, or women who were not granted permission to be photographed. Some sent clothing to be photographed instead of themselves.

The annotations and footnotes are exhaustive and compelling. The man for whom the exhibit is named, for example, discovers that official records list him as dead, even though he is in fact alive, and his land is no longer registered in his name.

“It never amounts to some sort of conclusion. For me it’s about those areas that are less speakable in a way. It’s not about forming an equation that arrives at an answer, but lots of questions, and disorientation,” Ms. Simon said.

Ms. Simon’s work is included in major public collections at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum, Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. Her previous “Contraband 2010″ project presented more than 1,000 images of items detained or seized from passengers and mail entering the United States from abroad. Her 2007 work, “An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar 2007,” included radioactive capsules at a nuclear waste storage facility and the art collection of the C.I.A.

“My past work was always about cataloging things but in this, I wanted to find an absolute catalog, something I could not edit,” Ms. Simon said. “That led me to blood, a representation of order, but to have that budding up against disorder of the stories, concerned with ideas and systems behind stories themselves. Several of the stories read like something out of the past that are happening now, or may happen in the future.”

The full story is at the NEW YORK TIMES